Another Planet: Cappadocia -1

The moment I saw fairy chimneys, first thing came to my mind was Cappadocia should be another planet. Another planet or a magical place in a fairy tale. It is so interesting and hard to imagine how it got its formation. For many years wind and rain made the deposits of volcanoes ash and lava from 60 million years ago take the form of valleys and fairy chimneys that can be seen today. Houses carved in rocks, churches, dovecotes and variety of thousands years of civilizations… Is it normal? For me it is fantastic. That’s what it already looks like.

Where is Cappadocia?

I had no idea how big Cappadocia is before coming here. As we wander around the list of places to see was getting longer. It was a last minute change to come here so we didn’t make any plans, we caught unprepared.

It is 250 km2 landscape, lays in Nevşehir, Kırşehir, Niğde, Aksaray and Kayseri. Mostly in Nevşehir. Most popular places to visit are Ürgüp, Göreme, Avanos, Ihlara and Uçhisar.

We went directly to Göreme (don’t know why) and we understood that one can not simply finish Cappadocia tour in a couple of days.

Getting to the Journey

Our intention was actually to go to the Lake District and stay on the shores of different lakes for 5-6 days. But we realized that there was a lot of people going on that side because of the holiday season. We decided to go to Cappadocia, which stands at a corner of our mind, when the possibility that there would not be a place like we expected so much in the turquoise waters of Lake Salda. When we made this decision, we were already going to Eskişehir and we said “Let’s go to the Varuna Travelers” so we went to the city center and spent the night. On the way, we might have taken breaks, made some friends.

On the next day it didn’t take long to understand miles of stretches of plains were waiting for us. The road from Eskişehir to Sivrihisar was the definition of the flatness word. The area is very yellow, very flat and very hot. One of the biggest disadvantages of having a 94 model car was the lack of air condition, touching a very deep place in us. During the afternoon hours, the air was getting warmer and the track became harder but sometimes the scenes made us forget everything.

After the plains we continued to go on the yellow and hot roads again for a long time. Sometimes we went through the roads where even a single car did not pass, we passed by the villagers. We traveled without believing in space and emptiness and eventually we got to Salt Lake, where we were curiously waiting. You will be able to read the Salt Lake article in the coming days, which contains a lot of frustration.

Caravan Experience in Göreme

When we got to Göreme, it was getting dark. We were in a place where we were totally strangers and we had no information or idea about it. Travel 500 miles on hot plains made us really tired. We had to park the caravan and find a safe place to stay, but we didn’t have that much energy. We decided to find a suitable hotel, relax and think about it in the morning.

In the morning, after breakfast, our first job was to get detailed information and some maps by talking with the hotel owner. He said that we can stay at every empty place we want. He said no one would bother, no security problems. He was persuasive enough. We were excited about it. Everywhere was a fairy chimney and it took only 3 seconds for me to surrender to the cliche of “everywhere in Cappadocia is a picture frame”. First of all, we decided to go to the Göreme Open Air Museum with the suggestion of the hotel owner and the social media. Everywhere was so good for the caravan so we parked and spent some time before entering the museum.

We are not tourists who are trying to visit as many places as possible during the trip. If we travel in rush, we do not understand much. If there is a landscape, a place, a view to enjoy we can sacrifice a few new places. The landscape you see above, for example; If I remember correctly, we did not do anything here, just looked around and spent 2 hours warming up in the sun. Staring at the fairy chimneys that were scattered over the space, the warm sun and the occasional horse sounds were so beautiful that I could not stop talking if i start. Of course going to the museum did not happened. We said “we’re here now, we’ll go” (we didn’t). We went out to drink coffee and then went for a walk on the fairy chimneys. Everywhere was like a museum anyway.

Sunset Point

After wandering on fairy chimneys, it was sunset time so we decided to go to “Sunset Point” which was another highly recommended place. After we went up with the caravan, it got crowded and roads became narrowing so we left it and began to walk. Good thing we did because after a while we saw the sign “NO MOTOR VEHICLES”. But when we arrived at the end of the road we realized that; this warning has not been heard by other than us.

I can not say that we regret that we did not go with the van, because it would be very stressful to find a suitable place for ourselves while trying to proceed in this crowd. Instead, we walked whole hill like we wanted. There was a cafe here. The name was “Sunset Cafe”. Although it seemed as a standard cafe with seating areas and souvenirs, you can be confronted with a view that will surprise you when you approach the fridge to get something to drink. Run, run! There are a lot of different beers which you can’t find in a standard street bar. Besides, you can taste wine, get the wine you like and drink against the sun.
In recent years, when we think of the attitude of our country against this kind of places, we were very surprised, delighted and immediately grabbed two beers. Shame on people who made us talk about this.

Sunset Cafe also had a photo service. There were people with camera who were willing to make that moment immortal and give you the opportunity of having a photo which will be on your showcase forever as if it’s impossible for you to be able to take photos with today’s technology.

There was an area where tents can be built on the hill. It might be amazing to stay here overnight, and see the balloons that fly in the morning. However, according to the information we received, there may be a noisy environment until late because it is always crowded in the evening. There was no other warning.

As we continued to wander around, the sun gradually descended, descended, descended and we understood why its name is sunset.

As it started to get dark, we went down, took our van and parked it in a parking space on the main street (even so it was very quite) under the trees. Now we’re ready to go out for food. After a bit of internet research, we became a little impatient to try the local food.

Here you can find the second part of the article for Kaya Camping, balloon and hunt for local foods in Göreme.